The Irish Mitsubishi FTO Owners Club

Okay, so here are the symptoms,

Letting off causes radio to turn off but the lights stay on, so does braking some times as does a few other things.
Indicators cause the volt meter to move between 12V and 13V at the same rate as the ticks.
The revs drop quite low sometimes almost to the point of cutting out, and sometimes the lights dim almost to the point of being off.

I wonder could this be caused by a slack throttle cable? It's quite slack actually, I can press down the pedal an inch or so before the throttle bites. Is this an issue anyone has encountered before?
I wonder could the de-cat which doesn't fit properly cause this? Or the ECU needing to be reset?

Any help at all is very much welcomed.

Try disconecting the batery for an hour.

It sounds as if your alternator is nearly gone. To test this, run the car and then disconnect the negative battery terminal. If it cuts out, you need a new alternator !

HTH

I reckoned as much Anyone got one for sale?

I would also reckon your alt is on the way out. Battery is prob knackered also at this stage
I havea few for sale. Call me if you need one.

0866029362

Dilogoat86 wrote:I reckoned as much Anyone got one for sale?

eBay is also good for new ones. I got a brand new GPX Alternator over from the UK - I think it cost about €130 shipped.

Yeah CamSkill do them for £129 + Delivery I think. But eBay has the cheaps when it comes to things like that. I may also do a refurb on it before just to see. I also have a feeling the exhaust isn't helping. The idleing overall isn't the best so sorting that and the lambda and the ECU reset should see an improvment. I tested the battery and it's fully charged and there's no drain or anthing.

How did you test the battery, by putting a meter accross it. That will only give you the voltage. If the battery is weak. You will notice it if leave an interior light on it will srain quickly. Depending on how the alt is failing it could be boiling the batt or if charging low it will maintain the 12+ volts but the power will not be in the batt.

I put a meters across it and then put a trickle charger on it. The meter read 14.6 volts and the charger said the battery was already charged and was in maintanence mode. It has warning lights for certain problems. If that's not sufficient then I'll give anything else a go.

Kace wrote:It sounds as if your alternator is nearly gone. To test this, run the car and then disconnect the negative battery terminal. If it cuts out, you need a new alternator !

HTH

Did you try this?

I'll give that a shot tomorrow evening. I've just come back in from swapping the decat to the new SS one. I'm bummed out, it didn't stop the noise. Sounds like it's coming from the back manifold/downpipe join. I'll need to take that off and sort out seeing if that's making a proper seal. Do manifolds fail on these engines ever?

Just tried the battery terminal disconnect method and it had no effect. The car didn't cut out or even idle differently. So now I'm stumped?

Could it be something as simple as a fuse?

I'd try a different Battery..

I've just had to replace mine..

the one I had in would hold a charge for about a hour or so... when measured it looked like it was fully charged..but no..
Battery number 3 in my little collection sitting behind the shed.. where do I dispose of them safely??

They take them up at the Ballyogin dump. If you can fill your car with rubbish then I think it's €20 and you can dump everything there and it's all recycled.

This morning while driving to work the car was cutting out everytime I let it idle after stopping. After about a half hour it started to idle okay again. To me that's the lambda going funny and not reading right. Now I have ordered a new one so I should have that soon.

Dilogoat86 wrote:This morning while driving to work the car was cutting out everytime I let it idle after stopping. After about a half hour it started to idle okay again. To me that's the lambda going funny and not reading right. Now I have ordered a new one so I should have that soon.

I assume the engine was warmed up at that point that cutting out was occurring? A faulty or badly calibrated TPS can also cause this problem, had the same issue on my RX-7, new TPS sorted it.

CJ

Hmmm, allow me to list the current issues and see if we can diagnose the problem.

Two best theories: TPS faulty(Possible, but should present with more problems??), Lambda faulty (Likely, but wouldn't cause all the issues),
Other theories: Battery needs renewing (likely), alternator faulty (pretty sure this isn't the issue though)

Possible causes/symptoms;
-Stretched/stack throttle cable
-Somewhere between the manifold and the decat there's a LARGE exhaust blow
-Exhaust has been damaged for a long time
-Electrical issues eg indicators causing volt meter to jump between 12.5V and 12.75V
-Revs drop right down to <500RPM on occasion

I'm confused.

I'll try swapping the battery tonight to see what result that has.

Dilogoat86 wrote:indicators causing volt meter to jump between 12.5V and 12.75V

This can be caused by a bad earth, add that to the mix.

Re sensors, have you undertaken a diagnostic?

CJ

This one has me stumped to the point that I think it's two separate problems.

I knew it wasn't the alternator because the issue with the voltage bouncing around when the indicators are on, or the radio cutting out momentarily when you swtich on the full beams, persisted with the engine off. However, it can't really be the battery because the car will start every time, all day long, and the starter draws a lot of power, right?

Bad earth was what I ended up thinking, but I wouldn't even know where to begin finding it.

The car cutting out is probably a combination of lamda sensor and exhaust issues. Without doing a diagnostic, I'm assuming the lambda sensor is faulty because the car runs quite rich. On the other hand, that blowy gasket on the front pipes is not helping.

Annoying!

CJ wrote:

Dilogoat86 wrote:indicators causing volt meter to jump between 12.5V and 12.75V

This can be caused by a bad earth, add that to the mix.

Re sensors, have you undertaken a diagnostic?

CJ

I was reading about that. How do I do that? Is there a guide? Do I need to buy a diagnostics tool?

Dilogoat86 wrote:I was reading about that. How do I do that? Is there a guide? Do I need to buy a diagnostics tool?

Search for forum for 'diagnostic'...

CJ

CJ wrote:

Dilogoat86 wrote:I was reading about that. How do I do that? Is there a guide? Do I need to buy a diagnostics tool?

Search for forum for 'diagnostic'...

CJ

Found it eventually. I'd be interested in writing up some how-to things if someone wants to make a section on the site that makes them easy to access?

Dilogoat86 wrote: I'd be interested in writing up some how-to things if someone wants to make a section on the site that makes them easy to access?

That'd be the knowledgebase, that and the search facility make it easy enough IMO.

Yeah the knowledgebase is great, it's a fantastic tool. I meant more like a section that you can pick a category like interior, exterior, engine etc. and then the related how-to article is in there. I'm just really keen on how to articles for some reason

Dilogoat86 wrote:I meant more like a section that you can pick a category like interior, exterior, engine etc. and then the related how-to article is in there.

PHPBB3 allows the option to create sub-forums from an organisational perspective. Threads could then be categorised on a per sub-forum basis. I'll look into it to see if its worthwhile (vBulletin offers a slicker approach but it ain't free )

CJ

I think it would benefit people in general when trying to find a particular type of howto. If you need any help let me know.